Bookworm

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Pantheon) In a special edition of Bookworm, Art (Maus) Spiegelman joins us to introduce Kim Deitch, -one of the best kept secrets in comics for over 35 years.- Deitch-s graphic novel is a double extravaganza-a comic about the making of animated cartoons.

In this edgy conversation, author Jonathan Franzen and his interviewer take positions, argue, reverse positions and start again...

Tell Me (Counterpoint); Why Did I Ever (Counterpoint) Mary Robison returns to her student days of writing stories for John Barth's workshop, and the days of being edited by Roger Angell, for The New Yorker, and by Gordon Lish, for book publication at Knopf. These teachers and editors both shaped and thwarted her enigmatic, instinctually accurate style...

In this moving interview, Sandra Cisneros reveals the connection between history and family history: the processes of memory....

Joyce Carol Oates' I'll Take You There (Ecco) appears to be a novel about college in the 1960s and interracial dating. At its heart, though, it pits skeptical against mystical philosophy...

The Skirt and the Fiddle (Grove) When young Egolf-s first novel, The Lord of the Barnyard, was published, he was compared to writers he-d never read or heard of. Now, his second novel, a breezier, easier book, is being compared to his first. In this conversation, we talk about the vibrant smells of both his books-a tour through the sewers and gutters of bohemia.

Summerland (Hyperion/Miramax Books) A magical conversation with Michael Chabon about children's literature...

The Book of Splendor (Norton) History, hilarity, romance and spirituality find a meeting place in the Prague of 1601. A simple Jewish orphan falls in love with a golem, and an emperor searches for the secret of eternal life: Frances Sherwood explores the path from history to fantasy, from societal regulation to sexual liberation.

The Book of Illusions (Holt) Paul Auster expresses his preference for mysterious clarity over "clever" literary effects in  The Book of Illusions, a metaphysical thriller about a mysterious filmmaker...

In the Hand of Dante (Little, Brown) Nick Tosches, a veteran tough guy, tells us what happens when the original manuscript of The Divine Comedy falls into the hands of the Mafia...